Thursday, February 18, 2010

Sometimes things sound better on paper

For my recent birthday I bought myself a copy of the infamous Mastering the Art of French Cooking - I do have quite a few of her others but after reading Julia Child's Life in France I decided I needed it too (as you might know my philosophy is you can never have too many cookbooks!). And I have to say, one thing I pride myself on is the ability to read a recipe and know that it will turn out good. Well, the recipe I picked looked good - I mean the combination of ingredients sounded perfect - beef, onions, tomatoes, rice - all cooked together - what's not to love? Well, I didn't love it. That is not to say it was terrible, it wasn't - and Richard really liked it. I guess I just thought my other beef stew over rice or my leftover stew risotto were better. I'm sure it's a perfectly fine recipe and that most people would like it, but I just thought it was ok. So I'm not going to go to the trouble of writing the recipe here, but you can find it on the net if you feel the need. Boeuff a la Catalane is the recipe and if you really want to try it my suggestion is to reduce the amount of rice and increase the amount of liquid; even the addition of swiss cheese didn't help. But really, try my other stew and serve it over rice - it is true love. And just for the record - I love Julia and will try other recipes from the book but won't be doing any "project" and cooking them all!